tcreate freezes when trying to run

liuyi wrote on Jul 30, 2009

Hi everyone,

I'm an undergraduate working on a summer research project using IRAF. I am having some problems with making a table using tcreate.

I tried the command on a very simple table, so my data file looks like:

1 2 3 4 5
2 3 4 5 6

and my column definition file looks like:

A i
B i
C i
D i
E i

When I run tcreate, it gives me the error message "WARNING: can't read file ." I went into the parameters and set uparfile=STDIN and ran it again. This time, there were no error messages, but nothing happens, the tt> prompt doesn't even show up anymore no matter how many times I press enter. I thought there might be something wrong with my data and column files, so I went into "help tcreate" and copied the data and column files from example 3, and still the same problem (system stopped working) happened.

So I have two questions:

1) What's going on with the uparfile? Is it actually not optional? and
2) Why does tcreate freeze like that when I run it?

Any help or insight is greatly appreciate. Thanks in advance!

Liuyi

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Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Jul 30, 2009

Please post some details about how you are actually calling the task. Use of STDIN in allowed for some of the inputs, but note the last paragraph of the uparfile description where it explains that data must be entered twice. So, my first guest is this isn't a 'freeze' so much as the task is simply waiting for input to be typed in. The 'cannot open file' may simply be a filename typo, but without details .....

-Mike

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liuyi wrote on Jul 30, 2009

Hi Mike,

I am calling the task in the terminal by entering:

tcreate newtable col testcoords

where "testcoords" and "col" are the names of the data and column description file respectively.

I think the can't read file has something to do with the uparfile because it gives the error message if I only change the uparfile parameter to nothing and keep everything else the same.

Thanks,
Liuyi

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Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Jul 30, 2009

The "Can't read file" message should normally have the filename in it. Be sure you don't have a parameter set to a space character where it should be a null string (i.e. "" not " "). Try "unlearn tcreate" to reset the params.

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liuyi wrote on Jul 30, 2009

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your quick reply. The problem was indeed that the uparfile parameter was set to " " instead of "". It works wonderfully now.

Liuyi

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Last post on Jul 30, 2009